(1) Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a system for surveillance and, more particularly, to a system for surveillance by integrating radar with a panoramic staring sensor.
(2) Description of Related Art
There are several existing surveillance systems that combine camera and radar which are designed for ground-level surveillance. Among them are (1) the Night Vision Labs Cerberus Scout manufactured by MTEQ located at 140 Technology Park Drive, Kilmarnock, Va.; (2) the Blighter Explorer manufactured by Blighter Surveillance Systems located at The Plextek Building, London Road, Great Chesterford, Essex, CB10 1NY, United Kingdom; (3) the Honeywell Radar Video Surveillance (RVS) system manufactured by Honeywell, which is located at 2700 Blankenbaker Pkwy, Suite 150, Louisville, Ky. 40299; and (4) the U.S. Army's COSFPS (a.k.a. the “Kraken”). While designed to be deployed in different situations, these systems all share the common base configuration of a small ground-scanning radar that scans for targets, a camera or cameras (e.g., electro-optical (EO) and infrared (IR)) that can mechanically slew and zoom to regions of interest (most likely as the result of a radar message), and an operator console that allows a human operator to either automatically slew to radar hits or examine other locations by manually controlling the camera.
Any system with a radar and single movable camera configuration will share the same limitations. The cameras in these systems are reactive, meaning that the operator slews the camera to the location of a possible target only after the system registers a radar hit. Because of this, there is an unavoidable delay between the triggering of an event in radar and the operator's examination of the event. At minimum, this delay is the time required to slew the camera to the new location, which might be enough time for the target to change positions, though a skilled operator might be able to “search” the regions surrounding the location of the radar hit and pick up the target. However, a more dangerous scenario is one in which multiple radar messages are received in quick succession of one another. In this case, the system operator must choose which targets to attend to first, quickly analyze the region, and then repeat with the subsequent radar hit locations. It is easy to imagine a scenario in which the operator is swamped by simultaneous radar hits and cannot examine them all in a timely manner. In this situation, targets will escape the vicinity of their radar location.
Thus, a continuing need exists for an advanced panoramic staring sensor that covers a wide field-of-view and continuously records the entire panorama in order to ensure that a radar target is never missed.